Author Archives: ekharodia
Creating a Positive Ethos – Our Whole School Approach
Family read: At Abbey Primary Community School ‘family reading’ is encouraged. On a weekly basis chatter matters takes place in KS1, which has dedicated sessions that focus on reading and sharing books with a family member. Each term our children are set reading challenges where they are asked to log down each time they are reading together with a member of their family. The family that reads the most books during the school holiday will receive the family reading award.
Reading in the playground: A range of books are taken into the playground for our children to access. On hot summer days the children can sit under the shade of the trees enjoying a good book.
Phonics: For our children who are starting out on their reading journey, we focus on getting them to recognise letters and sounds and high frequency words. As their understanding of how letters, sounds and words becomes more competent, our focus changes to comprehension and the understanding of what is being read.
Class novels and reading for pleasure: Class novels are also used to engage children in reading and where possible these are linked to our curriculum topics. Shorter stories are used in both Key Stage 1 and Foundation Stage to hook our young readers. In school we have books to suit all readers including an extensive range of high interest, low level texts. These allow all of our children to access reading material at a level which is suitable for them.
Reading champions: Each week our teachers will choose a ‘Reading Champion’ which will be awarded for a variety of different reasons e.g. the most books read, most progress made etc. A certificate and coloured wristband is then presented to the child in Friday Awards Assembly.
Extreme reading: Over the summer the children were invited to take part in a photo competition, for children and staff, to be captured reading in the most obscure and entertaining place that they can think of.
Recommended reading lists: On this page are links to our book list to help you choose appropriate books for your children to read at home.
Guided Reading – It is an entitlement that all children at Abbey Primary School receive an adult led guided reading session in their class once a week. During guided reading classroom practitioner’s focus on targeted groups of children to extend their reading skills through carefully planned reading tasks that are linked to their age and reading stage.
Book Study – A book study is when teachers read a text to their pupils. This is usually pitched at a higher level than the individuals in the class currently read at. This is to promote more exciting, challenging texts to pupils and to develop their skills of inference and deduction. As a class, the children explore a comprehension task/type of question and then in a follow up activity revisit the task either independently or with adult support.
Reading Initiatives
At Abbey Primary Community School we believe that reading is one of the most important skills our children need access the curriculum whilst also being a vital life skill. We know that confident readers can access a wide range of life experiences and enjoy a breadth of genres. Reading allows individuals to acquire knowledge, find out what’s going on, achieve and enjoy themselves! It is important that we help our children to become competent in the skill of reading, understanding what they have read and also empowering them to love and appreciate reading for life.
To enable this to happen, we aim to keep reading fresh and interesting for our children by using a range of teaching strategies and initiatives through our everyday practice which creates an ethos that positively promotes reading.
Bhangra Blaze
The ultimate Bhangra workout. Lose weight, tone your body, get healthy, make friends and have loads of fun.
The BhangraBlaze workout is not a dance class but a fitness routine based around basic but powerful Bhangra moves. It’s an incredible hour of fun which will blaze away the calories.
Starting July 18th 2016 – 6pm to 7pm, Abbey Primary Community School, £40 for a 10 week black booking or £5 pay as you go.
Contact Pooja Kapadia on 07969184363.
www.bhangrablaze.com
Children in Need
Thanks to everyone – we raised £650 for Children in Need.
Incrediboys Phonics
The teaching of phonics is an essential part of every child’s education. The phonics approach teaches children to decode words by sounds, rather than recognising whole words. The emphasis in early years teaching is on synthetic phonics, in which words are broken up into the smallest units of sound (phonemes). Children are taught the letters (graphemes) that represent these phonemes and also learn to blend them into words. So, at its most basic, children are taught to read the letters in a word like c-a-t, and then merge them to pronounce the word cat. The new Incrediboys Group in F2 are loving their phonics … which is the stepping stone to great end of KS2 results too. Last year our boys (with 96% Level 4+ in reading and 98% Level 4+ in writing) outperformed not just boys nationally but girls too! Also 46% of boys got Level 5+ in writing – 18% above national.
Popular Sites and Apps
Below is a guide on current popular sites and apps being used by children and young people.
http://www.internetmatters.org/advice/apps-guide/#tab-1431531253-1-85
Internet Safety
We are advising all parents and carers to be aware of your children’s online safety concerning the use of social networking sites and apps such as Facebook, Instagram, Snapchat and Twitter. These could be used through laptops, PCs, smartphones, tablets and other internet enabled devices. The majority of these popular social networking sites and apps are only for use by those 13 and over so children in a primary school should not be using them. The age limit is put in place to safeguard children, protect their privacy and to prevent them from being targeted with unsuitable advertisements. It’s important to know all the sites and apps that your children are using, across all your internet enabled devices, and that you make sure they are suitable and age appropriate.
Mr Foster and our IT Technician Mr Emran Kharodia are available to discuss any help you may need or concerns that you have.
Teach my Kids
Our homework is now being set from the excellent website www.teachmykids.co.uk set up by Sunita Patel (an ex-teacher from Shenton Primary). The basic package to access all homework sheets for your child for a whole year costs only £19.99 – an excellent deal. Email to sunita@teachmykids.co.uk if you want more information.
Abbey Primary – Diversity and Harmony
We are extremely proud of our diverse school. The ‘Abbey family’ is home to pupils from a very wide variety of backgrounds, races and religions. The wider world is going through a period of immense and often violent discord. Within Abbey and the local area it is essential that we continue to seek common ground between all communities – things that unite us and not divide us. As our School Prospectus says “Children will be encouraged to show the good values of courtesy, sensitivity and tolerance as appropriate in a diverse community. The school will not tolerate any discrimination or inequality of opportunity.” Our role as a school is to help develop our pupils to be valued and valuable members of this diverse community. Preparation for life in 21st century modern day Britain takes many forms and this week we are having a massive push on ‘Good Manners’. Academic performance is just the start of success in life. Social skills play an equally important part – hence our insistence on our pupils saying, “Please”, “Thank you” and “Good morning”.